


Citrus Apologies

by Sanctuaria



Series: Celebrating AoS Season 7 (with angst and hurt/comfort) [3]
Category: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (TV)
Genre: 7x02 spoilers, Angst, Apologies, Dekesy, Gen, LemonQuake, Lemons, season 7, season 7 spec fic, the fruit NOT THE FANDOM TERM
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-06
Updated: 2020-06-06
Packaged: 2021-03-04 04:34:58
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,441
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24567802
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Sanctuaria/pseuds/Sanctuaria
Summary: Post-7x02. Daisy and Deke deal with a betrayal of trust and where they go from here.
Relationships: Deke Shaw & Skye | Daisy Johnson, Deke Shaw/Skye | Daisy Johnson, could be a precursor to Deke Shaw/Skye | Daisy Johnson if you like
Series: Celebrating AoS Season 7 (with angst and hurt/comfort) [3]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1764745
Comments: 19
Kudos: 69
Collections: fill the daisy/deke tag with actual content 2020





	Citrus Apologies

**Author's Note:**

> Sooo I'm back on my shit and writing more Deke & Daisy. Tbh this one was really hard to write thanks to the absolute pickle the writers have left these two in after 7x02, both for Deke and Daisy friendship/anything else and for Daisy as a character, if she's headed for directorship at the end of this as many of us have theorized. But, here we go anyways!
> 
> Also, thanks to anakinno for inspiration. This tag will be filled if it is the last thing we do ;)

If she’s honest, Daisy doesn’t entirely notice something’s wrong until she notices the lemons.

Or, rather, the _lack_ of lemons.

It’s a weird thing to clue her in, and yet, it’s what she notices.

No lemons in her bunk. Well, that’s not _that_ weird, as they are time-hopping through the past at the moment, and plus, it was never really a regular occurrence anyway.

No lemon-flavored things in the fridge. Maybe they just ran out of soda.

No ornamental lemon tree salvaged from Deke’s startup taking up way too much space in the Zephyr’s tiny bathroom. No lemon paintings on the walls when she passes by his bunk.

No lemons _anywhere_.

Daisy sucks in a deep breath, then goes looking for Deke, despite feeling like she only has half the equation. No one would ever tell her exactly what the lemons meant—in fact, Mack avoided eye contact very suspiciously the three times she asked him before deciding that maybe she’d rather not know—which makes interpreting what their _disappearance_ means a little harder. But it doesn’t take a FitzSimmons-level genius to figure out that Deke’s upset at her.

And it _definitely_ doesn’t take one to figure out why.

So instead of showering, or eating, or sleeping, or any of the million other things she’d rather be doing, Daisy goes looking for Deke. Surprisingly, he’s not in the common area, or his bunk, or the kitchen. She finds him instead alone in mission control, a pile of cash in front of him even as he roots through the drawer for more.

She knocks on one of the glass panels, and, when he doesn’t respond, says, “Hey.”

“Hey.” He doesn’t look up, his voice flat and emotionless. Daisy swallows at how un-Deke-like it is, from the guy who usually wears his heart on his sleeve.

“I’m sorry.” It isn’t what she came in here to say to him, or even what she means to say, but somehow it’s what comes out anyways.

Deke’s hands still, resting on that pile of old-timey cash. He looks at her. “Yeah. Yeah, you should be.” The look in his eyes is foreign—she’s seen him hurt before, yes, maybe even betrayed after no one told him Fitz had died, but this is accusing. Angry. He’s never looked at her like this.

“I…” Her mind searches for something else to say. Say she was wrong, maybe, parrot some of Mack’s hour-long lecture, apologize again. “What happened to the lemons?”

Shit. Shit shit shit. Not what she meant to say.

“I threw them out,” Deke says in that same flat voice, returning to counting the bills in front of him. Counting? No. Checking printing dates. Preparing for their next mission.

“What did they mean?” Daisy asks.

“I think you know. You always knew.” She does. She did. No matter how much she might’ve wished she didn’t.

“I threw them out,” he repeats, closing the drawer. “I’m not giving you anything else you can use against me.”

“…I…that’s not…”

“You did. You knew I would listen to you. I’m an agent of S.H.I.E.L.D. now, just like the rest of the team, but I would listen to _you_. When you told me to _kill_ someone. Someone unarmed, someone who it was _the_ _mission_ to protect.”

Daisy’s quiet. That’s exactly what she’d done. Asked him to kill the man responsible for HYDRA’s rise in the United States, indirectly linked to millions of deaths in the Holocaust, and if she’s honest…if she’s honest, that’s not even why she did it. Without HYDRA in the U.S., maybe there would have been no Grant Ward. Without Gideon Malick, maybe Lincoln would have survived.

“But it’s fine,” Deke continues. “It’s just what everyone else does in my life too, so why should you be any different?”

“Deke…”

“No, Daisy. It’s why people keep someone like me around. The Kreepers did it. You guys, when you got to the Lighthouse. My own grandparents.”

“I’m sorry,” Daisy says again, an earnestness that was absent before bleeding into her voice. “You’re right. I used how you felt against you. And that was wrong of me.”

“I’ve saved the world or helped save it at least several times now. And I keep thinking, if I just pull off a Deke Shaw miracle one more time, then they’ll like me! Or at least, then they’ll accept me! Stop treating me as some kid along for the ride or someone who’s always gotta be kept under suspicion. But it’s never enough.” He looks at her, long-held pain in his eyes. “ _No, Deke, you’ll just get drunk and arrested again. No, Deke, your best friend was secretly a S.H.I.E.L.D. agent put there to spy on you the whole time. No, Deke, you can’t know that one of your grandparents died_.”

Daisy breaks his gaze, unable to stand the look in his eyes anymore. She walks two feet and rests her elbows against the holotable, head in her hands. “I know,” she mumbles. “I know, Deke. We should be better. _I_ should be better.”

“So why do they do it then?” he says softly, all the fight gone from his voice. “Why does everyone—why do you—”

“Maybe we’re all a little bit broken,” Daisy says through her fingers. “Maybe I’m a lot broken.” Silence meets her words, and the worst part about it isn’t admitting it but the fact that Daisy knows a day ago, Deke would have been at her side in a moment, reassuring her that she’s not broken, or at least that it’s okay if she is, because he is too. “But even if we are…you shouldn’t have to bear the brunt of it. That’s not fair to you.”

“I could handle it,” Deke says, “the ribbing and the teasing—I know I don’t always act normal to you guys—but the _trust_ —”

“I broke that,” Daisy says, swallowing.

“I used to think the world of you,” Deke tells her. “And the stupidest part of this is, I still do, somehow.”

“I’ll try to do better,” she says. “I can’t promise it’ll be perfect, but I—I screwed up. Big time. And I’m going to learn from that. It’s a same mistake I keep making—letting the fear of losing someone or the pain of having lost someone who’s already gone override my decisions. Letting me hurt someone who’s still here because of it. But I never should have put you in that position.”

“No, you shouldn’t have,” Deke says. “But…apology accepted.”

“What? No, you don’t have to—I don’t deserve—”

“I want to. Everyone makes mistakes.” He shrugs. “You made a big one this time. You apologized. As my mom would have said…it’s a step in the right direction.”

Finally, she nods. “That’s part of why I can’t accept them,” Daisy says. “The lemons. You’re too good, and I’m too broken.”

“Funny. I would have said the same thing.” He taps the wad of cash twice against the tabletop to straighten out the bills, then folds it and stuffs it in his pocket, beginning to walk out of the lab. “Goodnight, Daisy.”

“Deke,” she calls him back. “We’re not going to throw you away even if you stopped being useful. Just so you know.” He pauses in the doorway, his back still to her. “You’re part of the team. And…I know I don’t say it enough, but…you matter. To me. And…I’m just sorry if that gets you killed.”

He turns around, then walks up to her, closer than she expects, awkwardly close—and then he’s hugging her, and Daisy hugs him back, because it feels like the natural thing to do. And maybe because though she may not deserve it right now, after shattering his trust like that, she needs it too.

“So far, I’m pretty hard to kill,” Deke says somewhere close to her ear, and she closes her eyes and hopes that’s true. The hug lasts for two more heartbeats—hers or his, it’s hard to tell—before he lets her go, walking through the glass doors toward the bunks without a second glance.

* * *

The next morning, Daisy wakes up and nearly slips on a singular lemon placed carefully outside her door. She bends down and picks it up, holding it in her hand and bringing it to her nose to breathe in the faint, tangy scent of zest.

And if two doors down, Deke is getting ready for the day and finds an orange tucked into his shoe, well—it’s a step in the right direction.

**Author's Note:**

> I tried to give this a happy ending. I tried. Let us all hope the show writers have more success than I did.


End file.
